u/LoganixSEO

a lot has changed, but a lot hasn't

yes, they have their own index, but they don't rely solely on it. gpt models still refer to google and bing

second this

it can cost you some calls, mostly because a uk visitor sees an international number and assumes the call will be expensive or the business isn't local, not because of where you're from

why not use a uk virtual number that forwards to your phone or whatsapp, plus a contact form and a booking link so people don't have to call at all?

you've probably found the bottleneck. google decides how much to crawl partly on how important a site looks, and a freshly migrated domain with almost no outside links gives it little reason to do so, so sitemap entries can sit for weeks

a handful of decent links to the new domain, ideally pointing at the pages you need crawled, usually gets googlebot visiting more. also check the old domain's redirects are still live and that links you had before now land on the right new urls, since that's authority you already earned. request indexing in url inspection for the most important pages while you wait

people link to things that make their own page better: a number they can cite, a chart or definition they don't want to make themselves, a free tool, or a take strong enough to argue with

original data is one of the easiest wins, even a small survey or numbers from your own customers beats another "ultimate guide"

here's one good reason: chatgpt's search has leaned (partly) on bing's index, so a site bing can't crawl or hasn't indexed is harder for chatgpt to find

super solid effort for just 3 months. kudos!

good to know. thanks, legend

google lets you show an address and a service area together if you serve people at the office and at their location, but as i mentioned in my original comment, the office needs permanent signage with your business name and someone there to receive customers during your listed hours. a rented space you mostly work out of doesn’t count, even after video verification

so: signage up, hours you staff, customers coming in, and the address matching your lease, licenses and other listings. only then add it back, and change just the address, not five things at once. address edits are a common suspension trigger, so keep photos of the signage and the staffed office ready in case you have to verify again. as for the competitors showing theirs, some meet those rules and some just haven’t been caught yet

on the forum, reply that you’ve already done the edits and the redressal form, and ask for a product expert to escalate it

8 bookings from 1,170 paid visits says the ads reach people who aren't ready to book, which is common for 1 on 1 health services

i'd compare that to what your blog and direct traffic do, and if they're anywhere close, move the money into content answering the exact questions people search before choosing a dietitian, plus asking every client for a review

if you keep ads, run a small retargeting campaign to past site visitors

because there's so much ai-generated content being published these days, google has gotten a heck of a lot pickier about indexing new posts on lots of sites, so it's probably not something you've done

i'd recommend checking these three things:

1. your sitemap is submitted in search console and lists the new posts,
2. each new post gets linked from your homepage or a category page the day it goes live,
3. and the pages report doesn't show older posts as "crawled, currently not indexed", which would mean google is choosing to skip some content rather than missing it

linking to each new post from one or two older posts that already rank also helps google find it faster

if you use ahrefs, it'll get you most of the way here:

in keywords explorer, open the serp overview for the keyword and compare it to a snapshot from a few months back. it gives you a serp similarity score, and a low score is your sign the pages that were ranking have been reshuffled

the “identify intents” button then shows what the page is serving now. it won’t alert you on its own, so put your key pages in rank tracker and run that comparison whenever you see fit (maybe a manual check once a month). impressions holding while ctr drops in search console is another early sign something new pushed you down

if you want to automate this process, use the ahrefs mcp with claude, set up a routine in claude and have it run checks every fortnight or month. if the intent change shifts and the ranking pages start to change, you'll be notified by claude

It’s incredibly frustrating to pay for a real office, complete verification, and still get suspended while a competitor’s questionable listing stays up and keeps ranking at the top.

welcome to seo, lol

but to help you out: does google treat you as a service-area business? if so, showing the address breaks the rules, which is probably why hiding it got you restored. and for an address to show at all, google wants permanent signage with your business name there and the office staffed during your listed hours. a rented office with video verification isn’t enough on its own

for the competitor, the redressal form rarely moves on one report. a post in the google business profile community forum with your screenshots (the highway address, the review timestamps, and the same-name profiles) gets in front of product experts who can escalate, though expect a week or two. flag each fake review individually too

hope this helps!

google has said for years it mostly ignores junk links like these instead of penalizing the site they point at, so i wouldn't assume they caused the slip in rankings. instead, check whether the drop lines up with a google update or a competitor improving their pages before blaming the spam

a domain-level disavow won't hurt if it gives you peace of mind. the fake testimonials are the bigger issue: look up the host and registrar for each site and send abuse reports, and google has a legal removal request for pages making false claims about a business

wait, wait, wait... someone hacked the site, created over a million pages, and nobody noticed????!!!!!

awesome! thank you :)

how tf do you have 1.58+ millions pages?

which alternatives do you use?

you’ll get a lot of DMs offering link services after this post, lol

honestly, there’s no real quick win for backlinks. what you can get done this weekend is to do the basics that'll get you moving in the right direction:

1. set up google search console and bing webmaster tools and submit your sitemap to both. a lot of ai search pulls from bing, so don’t sleep on it. check that your robots.txt or cdn isn’t blocking crawlers like googlebot, bingbot, oai-searchbot and perplexitybot. a surprising number of new sites block them by accident
2. someone (or an ai) should know from your homepage headline that you verify documents, for whom, and why that beats the alternative. then add one page per main use case, like id checks or compliance, plus pricing and an honest “you vs the alternatives” page. those are the pages ai tools quote when someone asks “best document verification tool for x”
3. crunchbase and product hunt are a good start. add a linkedin company page, g2, capterra, and any regtech or compliance directories in your space. if you have an api or mcp, put the docs where developers look. most of these links won’t pass much seo value on their own, but buyers and ai answers both check them, so the name, description and category should match everywhere
4. this is where real links come from over the next few months. you’re sitting on data most people don’t have, like what kinds of fraud attempts you see or which documents get faked most. even a simple anonymized breakdown is the kind of thing journalists and compliance bloggers cite. integration partners listing you in their app directories is another easy one
5. if you're going to buy or exchange links, ignore dr and da metrics, and instead check that the host site gets real organic traffic from your market and covers your topic (fintech, compliance, saas), not everything under the sun. if it’s selling links to casino and pharma sites, or has a “write for us” page with hundreds of guest posts, walk away. ask for an existing article to see where your link would sit, make sure that page gets indexed, and keep anchors to your brand name or something that speaks to the services you offer. for swaps, the occasional one with a genuinely related site is normal, but google treats lots of “you link me, i link you” as spam

hope this helps!

they're super inconsistent because that's the nature of llms

llms aren't search engines with a predetermined index that's just pulled on request. their answers are different every time. the chances of an answer being the same, with the same recommendations, mentions, and citations, are insanely low

this. just link, forget, and check back in a week. if there's no link live on their end, follow up. still no link a week later? just remove your link, and move on with your life

start commenting and adding value on the threads that are ranking

this plus getting a page to rank for the target keyword and getting yourself into aios (if there is one), and you're taking up as much real estate as possible

duckduckgo lean heavily on bing's index, so this tells me it's one problem, not two. when bingbot keeps crawling fine but site: returns nothing, it's usually a domain-level call on bing's side, and bing doesn't always show those as a manual action in webmaster tools

i'd run url inspection in bwt on the homepage to see what it says, check for anything that could read as spam (hacked or injected pages, a sudden batch of new urls, outbound links you didn't add), then open a ticket with bing webmaster support asking for an indexing review. those tickets are slow, but they're often the only way a whole-domain drop gets explained

almost every site gets these. i'd only worry if you have a manual action in search console or rankings dropped right when the links showed up. if none of that's true, leave them alone. a disavow isn't needed for random junk links